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'Gayborhoods' fade with growing acceptance of LGBT

CHICAGO— At one of the oldest gay taverns in the city's Boystown neighborhood, the regulars were sharing a laugh over what they had seen the night before at their watering hole: a gaggle of straight women.

Sherelle Smith, left, kisses her fiancé?e Keela Taylor after a mock wedding ceremony at the booth for the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago for the Northalsted Market Days festival. Alyssa L Schukar for USA TODAY

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Nicole Landech walks along North Halsted Street with her 2-year-old daughter, Blair Silva, in Chicago's Boystown. Nationally, more straight people like Landech are living in historically gay enclaves.(Photo: Alyssa L Schukar for USA TODAY)

CHICAGO — At one of the oldest gay taverns in the city's Boystown neighborhood, the regulars were sharing a laugh over what they had seen the night before at their watering hole: a gaggle of straight women.

"It was like they were at a gay museum," joked James Davies, 61, who has been a regular at Little Jim's for most of the 39 years it's been in business. "They came to see if we fossilized."

Call it a sign of progress, or as University of British Columbia sociologist Amin Ghaziani describes it, the "de-gaying" or "straightening" of America's historically gay enclaves.

In the midst of 20 straight wins in federal courts for same-sex marriage and polling that demonstrates Americans' growing acceptance of LGBT people, scholars and demographers say there are signs that the draw of the so-called gayborhood is fading away.

Understanding the extent of the gay and lesbian migration from gayborhoods with precision is difficult, since the U.S. Census Bureau doesn't ask all individuals about their sexuality. But the bureau does collect data on same-sex couple households, providing the best, albeit incomplete, account of the USA's LGBT population.

By that measure, the number of gay men who live in gay enclaves nationwide has declined 8.1% while the number of lesbians has dropped 13.6% over the last decade, Ghaziani notes in his new book, There Goes the Gayborhood?

On its face, the changing demographics would suggest progress, a sign that fewer gays and lesbians see the need to envelop themselves in friendly enclaves. But the shift also presents gay communities with a quandary: how to preserve some of the culturally important spaces that have been at the center of the gay rights movement over the last 50 years.

"We have to ask the question, 'What will happen to these safe spaces in safer times?' " Ghaziani says.

From left, Sherelle Smith, her fiancee Keela Taylor, Dakota Jackson and his fiancee Marcel Campbell participate in a mock wedding ceremony at the booth for the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago for the Northalsted Market Days on Aug. 10, 2014.(Photo: Alyssa L Schukar for USA TODAY)

MORE STROLLERS, FEWER SEX SHOPS

The slow transformation that has caught the eyes of Ghaziani and other sociologists and demographers is on full display here in Boystown and in gay enclaves around the USA.

In Seattle, the historically gay-friendly Capitol Hill neighborhood saw same-sex households dive by 23% from 2000 to 2012, while such households were on the rise in nearly every other neighborhood in the city as well as surrounding suburbs.

Some of the most rapid dispersal of gays and lesbians is occurring in medium-size cities such as Tacoma, Wash., and Spring Valley, Nev., according to a 2012 study by the University of Washington's Amy Spring.

Here in Chicago, Boystown and its adjacent neighborhood account for about 12% of the city's self-identified same-sex households, according to Census figures. It's the highest concentration in Chicago, but Ghaziani says other neighborhoods in the city and suburbs are catching up.

Boystown still has a monument of rainbow pride pylons and plaques honoring gay and lesbian pioneers along Halsted Street, the main thoroughfare bisecting the neighborhood that includes the nation's largest LGBT community center, a bathhouse and plenty of gay bars and clubs.

And Boystown, which proudly claims itself as the nation's first municipally recognized gay neighborhood , soon will open one of the USA's first affordable housing developments meant to benefit the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors.

But Halsted Street these days is filled with more strollers pushed by straight couples who are drawn to the neighborhood's proximity to the lakefront and an elementary school that is regarded as one of the best in the city's public school system.

In a sign of changing tastes, Ghaziani notes that many of the sex shops that dotted the neighborhood's landscape have closed and been replaced by nail salons. Many of the straight residents he interviewed for his book, Ghaziani says, didn't even think of Boystown as a gay neighborhood.

The bars, long a center of gay life in gayborhoods, are changing, too.

Spin, a neighborhood landmark that featured a huge dance floor and amateur drag night, recently closed and was replaced by a whiskey bar. The nightclub is just one of several of the city's big gay nightclubs to bite the dust in recent years, notes Jim Bissonnette, a bartender at Boystown's Little Jim's and longtime neighborhood resident.

"The younger generation wants their bars shiny," Bissonette says as he stands behind the bar at the dimly lit tavern that draws an older clientele.

The Internet also has diminished the draw of the gayborhood. For a younger generation, chat rooms, dating web sites or apps like Grindr that help gay men set up casual encounters increasingly are seen as more comfortable spaces to meet other men, observes Mark Thomas, who has owned several businesses in the community over the years.

Perhaps an even greater factor influencing the changing face of Boystown and gay enclaves throughout the country has been gentrification.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the neighborhood was plagued by gangs and crime. That meant the real estate was cheap and landlords — desperate for tenants — were less likely to discriminate against the gay men who gravitated to the neighborhood.

In Boystown, as it did in gay enclaves such as New York's West Village and San Francisco's Castro District, the LGBT influx led to revitalization in the housing stock, an influx of new business and ultimately the gentrification of a once less than desirable community.

But in time, some of the gay population in Boystown — particularly those who didn't buy real estate when it was cheap — were priced out as the neighborhood rebounded and rents soared.

"Just what none of us wanted to see happen has happened," Thomas says. "The real estate went through the roof, the people who live here became wealthier and the baby buggies became more predominant. And what that did is force a lot of the gay population to other neighborhoods in the city and elsewhere."

The nearby Chicago suburb of Berwyn has sought to take advantage of rising prices and growing acceptance.

In an ongoing marketing campaign, the town of about 57,000 about eight miles from downtown has touted its relatively inexpensive housing. It also boasts of having one of the highest concentrations of same-sex households in the state and is among the state leaders in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples since Illinois legalized gay marriage.

Berwyn also has sent emissaries to Gay Pride and other events in Boystown to make the case to gays and lesbians to consider moving to the blue-collar suburb.

"People just want to live a good comfortable life," said Amy Crowther, an official at the non-profit Berwyn Development Corp. "They want places to go, things to do and they want a good home, and Berwyn has that. There's an openness here. We're not homogeneous."

END OF AN ERA?

For some gay and lesbians, the gayborhood is simply no longer as relevant as it once was.

Michael Rogers, 46, says when he moved to Washington, D.C., from western Pennsylvania nearly 20 years ago, his heart was set on living in Dupont Circle, the major gay enclave in the nation's capital.

But when he moved to Portland, Ore., last year, he says finding a neighborhood with a big LGBT population was a low priority.

"Twenty years from now, I'm not sure if gay neighborhoods as we know them now will exist," he says.

Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, an analyst at the Washington group Third Way who tracks public opinion on the LGBT community, says she and her spouse have their own simple litmus test as they've begun shopping around D.C. for their first home.

First, can they walk around the neighborhood holding hands without facing uncomfortable stares or catcall? Secondly, if they had a child, would he or she be the only kid at the local school or playground to have two moms?

"I think the older generation of LGBT people had to very much create a community for themselves that was protected and accepting and that's just not how the Millennial generation of LGBT people feel," she says. "I think we feel that we can be friends with whoever we want no matter their sexual orientation and that we can pretty much go wherever we want."

Jaime Zurheide, 38, who has lived in and around Chicago with her partner, says she never saw gay neighborhoods as much of a draw. In 2011, Zurheide, a doctoral student, and her partner bought a house in Berwyn, the suburb that is marketing to gays and lesbians.

Zurheide says she appreciates her town's effort to be welcoming. But ultimately her decision of where to move was based on the mundane calculations of commuting time and affordability.

She adds that her generation, particularly those living in and around urban areas, has a luxury that older gay and lesbians didn't have.

"I have lived here (in Chicagoland) for 10 years and it's not an issue that I have really ever had to think about," she says. "For an older generation, there was more having to fight for things. I don't feel like I have had to fight to be accepted."